http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/tm_headline=the-muddle-east%26method=full%26objectid=18809551%26siteid=89520-name_page.htmlTHE MUDDLE EAST
MCCLAREN FAILS TO DELIVER IN THE PROMISED LAND
Oliver Holt Chief Sports Writer Reports From Tel Aviv 26/03/2007
THERE was something horribly poignant about seeing Steve McClaren trussed and tied and taking his punishment in the marquee outside the Ramat Gan Stadium on Saturday night.
He didn't get flustered like he did before the match against Holland in Amsterdam in November. He didn't get angry. He didn't bite back.
He did manage to get the result wrong as soon as he sat down. He said England had lost to Israel.
Advertisement
Cue amusement or discomfort, depending on whether you like the guy or not.
Mostly, though, McClaren just sat there and took it. Dignified. Resigned. Blank. Like he was weary of it already. Like he was lost. Like he didn't understand how it had got so bad so quickly.
Game by game, McClaren is being stripped of his credibility as England manager until now there is precious little of it left.
The man is walking his own Via Dolorosa, stumbling towards his fate. I can't stand up for him. I'd like to, but my heart wouldn't really be in it. I think he's a decent man and a good coach who's been over-promoted.
But I don't think England's problems stop with him. Not by a long chalk. The picture's a lot bigger and a lot more depressing than that. The FA might have prevented some of the current malaise taking hold if they had made a more courageous decision when they were appointing the successor to Sven Goran Eriksson.
In a job where the manager has access to his players only for short periods of time, his motivational abilities assume an exaggerated importance.
That's why the FA should have gone for Martin O'Neill and why they might yet turn back to him in the summer. Him or Sam Allardyce, perhaps, if O'Neill's sense of loyalty ties him to Aston Villa.
Perhaps one of those two could cure the serial inability of a group of talented individual England players to reproduce their club form for their country.
McClaren has identified that as the key problem, but it is a problem he appears not to have the strength of personality to do anything about.
Let's be honest about it. England isn't the players' priority any more. Hasn't been for some time. Club football brings them their money and most of their adrenaline. England is an afterthought.
And that problem is only going to get worse. Particularly when you've got an uninspiring figure like McClaren at the helm.
Think about it. You spend every day with Jose Mourinho or Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger or Rafa Benitez or O'Neill or Allardyce and then you get passed on to McClaren for a short spell. How are you going to feel? You're going to be underwhelmed.
More than ever, the players need strength and direction when they meet up with England and they're not getting it from McClaren. All the fears about him being Sven-Lite are coming true. His substitutions against Israel amounted to a failure of nerve. Phil Neville, Aaron Lennon and Andy Johnson were the easy guys to take off. He could have switched Lennon to the right and brought on Stewart Downing or Kieron Dyer on the left.
But that would have meant disappointing either Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard, and, like Eriksson, McClaren did not have the courage to do that.
It's not just McClaren. It's the whole atmosphere surrounding the England team. I spoke to a foreign international last week who was laughing about the situation.
He said the England players at his club dreaded meeting up with the national side because they were already anticipating the criticism they were going to get if they did not perform. Another player in the squad confirmed that feeling yesterday. He said the problem was that the players don't enjoy playing for their country any more.
The natural reaction to that is shock and how it should be the greatest honour in their lives to wear the England shirt.
But for several reasons - primarily the demands of club football - playing for England doesn't engender the same visceral pride it used to in many players.
Saturday night showed that we have slipped back into the same destructive cycle of mutual loathing between England fans and England players.
The fans taunted McClaren and the players with cries of 'what a load of rubbish' and 'you don't know what you're doing'.
The majority of the players play for successful clubs. They are not used to that kind of treatment. They felt betrayed by the jeers. We're going backwards in international football. We've spent a decade wondering whether we might win a major tournament. Now, we've been reduced to fretting about whether we're going to qualify for one.
Something needs to be done. McClaren must stop fiddling and take radical action. He must shake up the team and establish his authority with actions, not words. If that's beyond him, the FA should admit their mistake and move on.
Otherwise, rather than ushering in a new era of glory, the new Wembley may find itself hosting an England side whose hopes have withered and died.